Russian Ex-Minister Accuses Putin Ally of Framing Him

Aleksei V. Ulyukayev, a former minister of economic development, at his corruption trial in Moscow on Wednesday.CreditCreditPavel Golovkin/Associated Press

By Lincoln Pigman

Aug. 16, 2017

MOSCOW — A former cabinet minister in Russia accused of accepting a $2 million bribe went on trial in Moscow on Wednesday, the highest-ranking official to be prosecuted in the country in decades.

The former minister, Aleksei V. Ulyukayev, 61, was in charge of economic development from June 2013 to November 2016, when he was arrested on corruption charges linked to the sale of an oil company.

The government has portrayed the case as an example of successful anticorruption efforts in Russia. Mr. Ulyukayev is accused of soliciting more than $2 million from Igor I. Sechin, the chief executive of the state oil giant Rosneft, in exchange for endorsing the company’s purchase in 2016 of a stake in Bashneft, a smaller oil firm that had been nationalized in 2014. Mr. Ulyukayev, a critic of the growing role of the state in the Russian economy, was the most prominent government official to object to the acquisition.

The defendant and many analysts say the extraordinary case involves one of President Vladimir V. Putin’s closest allies trying to settle scores.

According to the prosecution, Mr. Sechin reported the extortion attempt to the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the main successor agency to the K.G.B. He then worked with the intelligence service on a sting operation, and Mr. Ulyukayev was invited to Rosneft headquarters in Moscow on the night of Nov. 14, 2016.

Apprehending Mr. Ulyukayev as he left Rosneft’s offices, F.S.B. officers found 130 million rubles, or more than $2 million at current exchange rates, in the trunk of his car.

Mr. Ulyukayev, who pleaded not guilty at a pretrial hearing on Aug. 8, has said that no money changed hands, and that the charges against him were “fabricated.” He accuses Mr. Sechin’s allies, including Oleg V. Feoktistov, a retired F.S.B. general who became vice president of security at Rosneft before Mr. Ulyukayev’s arrest, of planting the cash in his car.

The defendant, who appeared at Zamoskvoretsky District Court in Moscow on Wednesday, made an oblique reference to Mr. Sechin’s role in court documents when he mentioned the Rosneft chief’s “weight in the Russian political establishment.”

Mr. Sechin, a veteran Soviet intelligence officer who worked for Mr. Putin during his time in the St. Petersburg government and who followed him to Moscow, is considered a leader among the “siloviki,” a powerful group of current and former intelligence and military officers. Before becoming Rosneft’s chief, he spent years as Mr. Putin’s deputy chief of staff, and he was deputy prime minister from 2008 to 2012.

In the book “All the Kremlin’s Men,” the Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar describes Mr. Sechin’s relationship with the Russian president as one characterized by “absolute loyalty and even servility,” and he portrays Mr. Sechin as a power player who is unforgiving of his rivals.

Mr. Zygar also attributes to Mr. Sechin responsibility for the fall of high-profile figures in Russian politics, including Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, a former chairman of the oil giant Yukos who spent several years in prison and who is an outspoken critic of the Kremlin; Mikhail M. Kasyanov, a liberal prime minister who fell out of favor with Mr. Putin and who was dismissed in 2004; and Viktor V. Cherkesov, the leader of the national drug enforcement agency who was fired in 2008 after a highly public feud with Mr. Sechin and his allies.

Mr. Ulyukayev, whose trial resumes Sept. 1, is to remain under house arrest until at least January. The last officials of such prominence to be prosecuted were the leaders of a coup in 1991 who sought to reverse the democratic changes of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. They were imprisoned after the coup, but were released and granted amnesty in 1994.